buzztap, sporting news aggregator, leverages IE8
I recently mentioned buzztap (note the lowercase spelling) in my post on web slice discoverability, and said that I would talk in more detail. It’s time.
I describe buzztap as a sporting news aggregator. During these days, I don’t have time to watch a lot of TV or spend hours reading web sites about my favorite sports teams. Buzztap allows me to get different news sources focused on my favorite team, in a quick viewing experience. And with IE8, they make it extremely easy to track my teams. I can quickly glance at my team’s news, and if needed, go directly to the content.
buzztap tracks sporting news for MLB, NBA, NFL, NHL, and D1 college teams.
Let’s take a look at the cool things that buzztap does with IE8.
Visual Search
I love to show this to customers. buzztap has a unique spin on how they leverage IE8 Visual Search.
First, using the search text box, you can quickly find your sports team including college teams. Typing in “chi” gets (see Figure 1 below), you get a list of Buzztap team sites for Chicago teams, Kansas City Chiefs, and even the Central Michigan Cougars. Clicking on one of these takes me to that team site, which is filtered news for that team.
Second, when highlighting text on a HTML-based page, most folks know that IE8 will provide an accelerator icon, and then a list of accelerators to pass the highlighted text to. In this case of having Buzztap’s search provider installed, you get the enhanced search experience – in other words, you get a list of articles that include the highlighted text, in a preview window, all without leaving/disrupting the browsing experience.
This combination of search experiences is unique, based on the search providers that I’ve seen.
From the Buzztap site:
buzztap search - This add-on allows you to search the latest on buzztap using the search provider bar in your IE8 browser [ figure 1 ], or by highlighting text on a web page and clicking the accelerator icon [figure 2] . When using the accelerator option, you can preview the buzztap search results without leaving the current page by simply hovering your mouse over the buzztap search option.
Web Slices
In my opinion, the real value from consuming the news on buzztap is by utilizing IE8 web slices. I have web slices for the University of Memphis, St. Louis Cardinals, and Dallas Cowboys (these are links to the buzztap team site). When you go to your favorite team’s page, you’ll get the option to install that team’s web slice. (Refer to my other post on additional ideas on this topic.) When you install the web slice, you get a view similar to this picture of today’s Dallas Cowboys web slice.
buzztap also includes the “Featured Buzz” web slice on the home page. This is a list of the hot topics for the day.
From buzztap’s site: The buzztap team-based web slice add-ons allow you to keep up to date on the latest buzz for a given team without leaving your current browser page…
The Inventory of buzztap Add-On’s
To see the entire list of buzztap add-on’s (including 200+ web slices), check out the buzztap IE8 page at https://buzztap.com/ie8. It’s an impressive list of web slices, as well as a link to the search provider.
If you like sports and visit this site with IE8, you’ll be hooked too!
And if you’re a Twitter fan, you’ll like buzztap’s Twitter efforts.